New York City-based Health Recovery Solutions raised $1 million from undisclosed investors, the company's COO Rohan Udeshi told MobiHealthNews. This brings the company's total funding to $1.8 million.
The company's product, PatientConnect, aims to help providers prevent costly patient readmissions by engaging them with a tablet-based program. The hospital provides patients with a cellular-enabled Samsung tablet, with PatientConnect preloaded. Providers pay Health Recovery Solutions a licensing fee for the package.
Patients can use the system to communicate with their physician via video chat. The tablet software also encourages patients to record medication, weight, activity, and symptoms. Clinicians and caregivers can monitor this data through their own apps, ClinicianConnect and CaregiverConnect. The patient tablet, which is equipped with a 4G data connection, will also offer educational materials about the conditions, which take the form of quizzes, pamphlets, and videos. The system can also collect data from A&D and Nonin home health devices.
When clinicians notice that a patients is not improving, they can reach out to those specific patients to help them stay on track and reduce readmissions.
"Right now we have about 15 [paying customers]," Udeshi said. "We've proved out some great results, all of our clients are averaging between 4 and 8 percent 30-day readmission rates. Now our goal is to use that funding to expand our sales and marketing efforts as well as expand our offerings to more diseases and reach a larger population of patients."
PatientConnect currently offers programs for patients with congestive heart failure, COPD, and diabetes. But Health Recovery Solutions has developed and is rolling out offerings for stroke recovery, post cardiac surgery, and hip and knee joint replacements. Towards the end of the year, Udeshi said the company plans to develop an offering for pediatric monitoring too.
Some of the company's customers include Johns Hopkins, Mass General, University of Pennsylvania Health System, AtlantiCare, and FirstHealth of the Carolinas. Health Recovery Solutions' newest client is Home Health Visiting Nurses, which is part of MaineHealth.
Health Recovery Solutions uses Samsung's tablets, but the company is also in talks with the technology giant to conduct a trial that makes use of Samsung's Simband.
"The goal at the end of the day is to be an 'all-cause' readmission platform," Udeshi said. "Right now Medicare is only penalizing certain conditions for readmissions. Eventually we're going to want to do away with all avoidable readmissions. [PatientConnect] is software-based: It can be completely customizable for any type of condition. We want to get to the point where the software can handle any patient you put in regardless of what the diagnosis is, what their demographic is, what the age is. [We want to be] the platform that can be tailored for any type of patients and keep them healthy and empowered."
Health Recovery Solutions was also in accelerator Blueprint Health's summer 2012 class.
